340
PARTISAN REVIEW
"But I praise my Redeemer," she said at last, "that He called
your Daddy home before me. I ain't saying it to throw no flowers at
myself, but, I declare, it keeps me from feeling too cast down to
know I helped your father get safely through this world. Your
father always acted like he was the roughest, strongest man on
earth. And everybody took him to be like that. But
if
he hadn't had
me
there-to see his tears!"
She was crying again. Still, I couldn't move. I said, "Lord,
Lord, Mama, I didn't know it was like that."
"Oh, honey," she said, "there's a lot that you don't know. But
you are going to find it out." She stood up from the window and
came over to me. "You got to hold on to your brother," she said,
"and don't let him fall, no matter what it looks like is happening
to him and no matter how evil you gets with him. You going to
be evil with him many a time. But don't you forget what I told you,
you hear?"
"I won't forget," I said. "Don't you worry, I won't forget. I
won't let nothing happen to Sonny."
My mother smiled as though she were amused at something she
saw in my face. Then, "You may not be able to stop nothing from
happening. But you got to let him know you's
there."
Two days later I was married, and then I was gone. And I had a
lot of things on my mind and I pretty well forgot my promise to
Mama until I got shipped home on a special furlough for her funeral.
And, after the funeral, with just Sonny and me alone in the
empty kitchen, I tried to find out something about him.
"What do you want to do?" I asked him.
"I'm going to be a musician," he said.
For he had graduated, in the time I had been away, from
dancing to the juke box to finding out who was playing what, and
what they were doing with it, and he had bought himself a set of
drums.
"You mean, you want to be a drummer?" I somehow had the
feeling that being a drummer might be all right for other people but
not for my brother Sonny.
"I don't think," he said, looking at me very gravely, "that I'll
ever be a good drummer. But I think I can playa piano."
